Their work plays variations on a theme.
Ms. Streep is that rare chameleon movie star who never just plays variations on her own personality.
The chef, Michael White, plays variations on traditional Italian food while staying rooted in the core principles of Italian cooking.
Naturally he fell in with the Ben Stiller/Owen Wilson crowd, where everyone plays variations on the same role and looks like they're having a great time doing so.
The novel plays variations on both, in fact; the characters are plump and historical one moment, dissolving their boundaries into primal experience the next.
In all four, he plays variations on a familiar theme: the distinguished gent with an inner flaw, apparently impeccable, actually cracked.
Working in velvety gray tones, Wright plays variations on a theme, piling flowers as if on a pyre or photographing them, full-blown, one at a time.
Michael White, formerly the chef de cuisine at Spiaggia in Chicago and at Ristorante San Domenico near Bologna, plays variations on traditional Italian food in the only way that makes sense.
Decked in gleaming steel, his mechanical trio plays variations on his themes of repetition and transformation, artificiality and the natural world, control and chaos -- and does so by fulfilling that other preoccupation of his: to get out of the body.
The latest Hitman and Street Fighter V both employ variations on this method, and we've even seen Microsoft experimenting with a free-to-play variation of its console hit Forza Motorsports, designed specifically for the PC market.
